Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: noxemol ce'u

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 6 Oct 2001 17:19:07 EDT

In a message dated 10/5/2001 7:43:39 PM Central Daylight Time, 
[email-masked] writes:

> In the case of {le du'u ce'u broda} the ce'u is in a subordinate bridi
> and there is no way it can be in a nonsubordinate bridi. In the case of 
> {le mamta be ce'u} it is not.
> 

Sorry, as I have said regularly, this {ce'u} is claerly in as subordinate a 
brid as is the one in {le du'u ce'u broda} and furthermore, as a linguist, 
you ought to know that it is. What is your point here?

<You may mean something 
> special by this claim, but in its plain sense it is just false: 
> raising  {le melba} from {mi senva le nu le melba cu cinba mi} allows 
> an illegitimate quantification, 

I don't see what illegitimate quantification is allowed.>

To {da zo'u mi senva le nu da cinba mi} Ain't no such da, and no reason to 
think there is.

<> fronting {le brode} in {da broda le brode} changes the meaning.  
> How does you theory deal with these?  

I recognize the second objection as prima facie valid, and "my theory"
[I am happy for it to be called my theory, but before your dissent I
would have taken it for uncontroversial fact] accounts for it thus:

   da broda le brode
=  x zo'u da broda ro lu'a x (voi brode)>

Since the equation is not obviously correct (and is further partly 
untranslatable as it stands), I con't find this an account of anyhting. x is 
I suppose a mass that exists independently of this sentence in the view of 
the speaker and later he will assign it as the reference of {brode}. What 
has this to do with the scope? Ah, so this is a terminological problem, as 
so often in loglan work (curse you again, JCB, for being a linguistic slob 
to Fennimore Cooper to shame). OK, now i have no idea what your claim means 
or how it affects the topic under discussion. You think that {le mamta be 
ce'u} violates it somehow, apparently, but I don't see how it even relates to 
it. Maybe, I should go against the usual habit and use another gadri? But 
no one does in the other cases -- what is special here?

<When I accused you of bad faith in recent discussion you protested
your innocence, so I had better keep a lid on my incredulity.

"Bridi" means, almost always, "grammatical bridi, clause". {le mamta
be ce'u} is not a grammatical bridi. These are statements of fact.>

bridi:x1 (text) is a predicate relationship with relation x2 among arguments 
(sequence/set) x3

No "grammatical bridi", whatever that may mean, no "clause." Admittedly, 
this is usual Lojban sloppy terminology (as is selbri for "brivla or tanru," 
which runs throught Refgram). But here it is justified, since at about two, 
levels down -- if not jsut one, I forget the details of your scheme and 
whether it is more complex than mine -- the expression here IS a grammatical 
bridi. And the transformations you want to make almost inevitably go through 
that level.

<The principle I expressed says that (I recast it):

When sumti phrase X is within sumti phrase Y and every bridi that
contains X or Y also contains the other, then the bridi can be
paraphrased, without changing meaning, in such a way that X is 
not within Y.>

Well, completely rewritten it to change it from palpably false to trivially 
true. Since the only sumti which match the original case are externally 
conjoined sumti, which by definition can be split sententially, this is nota 
very interesting case. Alternatively, you can, as I suppose you intend, go 
from {la djoun du le mamta be la bil} to, say, {da du la djoun ije da mamta 
la bil} which will work assuming that the {le} is veridical and unique, which 
by your rules elsewhere, it is not. So, the meaning changes.